ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Arthur Robins – Artist Statement –

Many people over the years have asked me what the ‘source’ of my pool paintings might be. After being asked if I’d go to poolrooms to draw “most people have been surprised when I have told them that I don’t. LIke all my art, they come from a place in the mind that I discovered where reality, memory and imagination meet. But the pool images are unusual in that the memories for these run deep.

It seems that my Uncle Arty, husband of my Mother’s sister Connie, had a poolroom on Avenue J in Brooklyn. I lived a few blocks away until the age of four. My Mother used to wheel me into the pool room in a baby carriage. I can vaguely remember the cool darkness; the slabs of green; the snarky figures darting about, moving slow and deliberately.

But these memories remained buried deep in my subconsciousness. It wasn’t until very recently that I was told, reminded, of “Arty’s place”. I had no idea that i had spent time as an infant and toddler in a poolroom. After learning this, it helped me to understand why my figures all seemed to be out of the 1950’s, since those years would have been between, 1953, and 1959!

Since this discovery, I have been doing more drawings from real life poolrooms, to further expand this avenue of artistic expression. The mixture of modern life with my “Fifties” imagery should be interesting.